Tao Geoghegan Hart: The 'overnight sensation' 10 years in the making

"I've only got one pink jersey.... that feels like a pretty apt metaphor."

British cycling's latest Grand Tour winner Tao Geoghegan Hart is in a reflective mood as he poses for a photo on home territory outside Hackney Town Hall.

Over his right shoulder is the maglia rosa - the pink jersey he's talking about, from October's surprise Giro d'Italia victory. When he hands it over for a quick look I can still smell the prosecco from the podium ceremony.

In cycling's Grand Tours, the race leader at the end of each stage is given a jersey to honour the achievement. When Sir Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de in 2012 he had 14 to his name, after dominating for much of the three weeks.

Geoghegan Hart only has one, because it wasn't until he crossed the line on the 21st and final stage of the Giro that he led for the first time.

Heading into that final day in Milan, Geoghegan Hart and rival Jai Hindley were separated by a few thousandths of a second. Never in the history of professional cycling had a Grand Tour been so close. And never in a million years would you have predicted Geoghegan Hart would be in the running after stage one.

The 25-year-old had arrived in Italy with one job. To ride in the service of team leader Geraint Thomas.

As a result, in treacherously-wet conditions, he took the opening individual time trial on stage one "easy". So easy that he ended the day in 126th place.

More than three thousand kilometres later at the conclusion of the 21st and final stage - another individual time trial - Geoghegan Hart became Britain's fifth Grand Tour champion following Wiggins, Chris Froome, Thomas and Simon Yates.

As well as being a metaphor for his unique 2020 Giro win, the solitary pink jersey is actually a pretty apt symbol for his unhurried, and unlikely, route to the top.

When Wiggins won Le Grande Boucle in 2012 he famously said that "kids from Kilburn" are not supposed to win the Tour de .

By his own ission Geoghegan Hart lacks the Wiggins wit to produce such a quip.

But a football-mad kid from a non-cycling family in central London conquering one of the biggest bike races in the world is arguably even more remarkable.

His Ineos Grenadiers general manager Sir Dave Brailsford perhaps described it best in the aftermath of victory.

"The stuff of comic books."

The story begins in 2008.

That was the year Geoghegan Hart, an Arsenal-mad goalkeeper good enough to represent Hackney - a London borough of over 200,000 people - took on a life-changing challenge.

Aged just 13 he was the youngest of a group of teenagers to swim from England to across the English Channel, in 11 hours and 34 minutes. Going back to the local pool simply didn't sate his new-found adventurous streak. Cycling did the job instead.

More than 10 years later, as we ride around the streets of his childhood, Geoghegan Hart re those early trips on his first proper bike - a second-hand women's one. Often alone, he would head out into the Essex and Hertfordshire countryside, covering huge distances "getting lost and being out all day".

He says: "It was something so different to everything I had done up to that point. Every sport up until then was always inside London. A football away game in Battersea or Croydon would feel like a real long way.

"Cycling was totally different because it removed me from all of that. I was independent and it just snowballed from there. The competitive spirit I always had led me to racing."

This is where the Wiggins and Geoghegan Hart stories diverge.

Wiggins' father Gary was a professional cyclist. His childhood was immersed in the sport. He spent "more time than was probably healthy" staring at posters dreaming of mythical foreign races like the Giro d'Italia.

Geoghegan Hart - the eldest of five children - is the son of a builder father and architect mother with no cycling background. His inspiration was found not in the high mountains but at Highbury - the then home of Arsenal football club.

"I was lucky that I grew up in the most inspiring and defining era of Arsenal," he says. "When I was a football-mad seven or eight year old we were winning the double. I was at the open top bus parade for the 2004 Invincibles season. What kid could want any more incredible imagery than that, especially in your neck of the woods"Billion Dollar Downfall: The Dealmaker " loading="lazy" src="https://image.staticox.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fichef.bbci.co.uk%2Face%2Fstandard%2F480%2Fsprodpb%2Fc1f3%2Flive%2F64425c60-42e5-11f0-835b-310c7b938e84.jpg" width="385" height="216" class="ssrcss-11yxrdo-Image edrdn950"/>